A Minneapolis Family's Excellent Adventures in Bangalore, India and Beyond...

Monday, October 6, 2008

Present and Accounted For...

Hello, fellow bloggers and readers of Blogdom. It may appear that the Fischers have faded into the Indian sunset...lost in some ditch or other...run clear off the road by the final Rickshaw, but...here we are. Alive and Well. A little lost and lazy, some might say...

I really did plan on blogging while we were visiting the land of our birth...kind of how I planned on keeping up with the yoga, running daily and restricting myself to only the occasional richly delicious real chocolate donut.

Well. Suspiciously tight trousers, aside...the rice and dahl have returned to our dinner plates and Bangalore is home once again.

I had glorious visions of relaxing moments over coffee and wine with friends, of days at the park, library or zoo... Instead, our trip from start to finish, was a whirlwind of constant activity. We had a great (if harried) time visiting family and friends, traveling in Minnesota, California and Philadelphia. There was great food, wine and coffee...just not enough time to see and do it all. If we missed you...well, we did miss you and hope to catch up next summer.

I'll leave you with the following thoughts and a photograph...Imagine a 51 hour travel time from Bangalore to Minneapolis. Alone with 2 kids, 6 checked bags, 3 carry-ons. Feel my pain as you don my sweaty shoes and find yourself in Dubai with a screaming 7-year old with ear pain, a 4-year old that refuses to stand up, and two duty free shopping carts with faulty wheels holding one of each...for 5 and a half hours, without a gate...cuz you're soooo early. Fast forward past the 13 hours flight to New York, past the planned 5 hour lay-over at JFK, past the additional 3.5 hour delay, past the 4.5 hours sat on the runway in the tiniest Delta jet, past the grounding of said flight, and finally towards the moment the Delta agent explains to me, not batting a false eyelash, "Ok, ma'am, we can probably get you out of here the day after tomorrow..." Feel the swelling of furious and uncouth words in my throat, damp, drooling and catatonic "babies" laying pitifully at my feet: "F*$%%&%%#@^*((*K!!!!!!!)

Standby to Atlanta (very late that night...courtesy of now fearful Delta agent)...Arrival near a full day later than planned...missing baggage...a fellow passenger who followed me about and seemed to think I had time, patience, and advice to offer regarding this, her terrible virgin airline flight. And finally, the rapturously overwhelming feel of the Super Target on Jet-Lag near my mother's house, where we stopped to buy the needful (baggageless and filthy as we were) and somehow ended up spending $300.00. Kind of Asleep.

It's all kind of foggy now... The memory of pain fades, replaced by the clarity of humor and the insane desire to TRAVEL MORE. There is pretty much no doubt in my minds that our kids are amazing travelers with the capacity to withstand...alot.

"You're moving *where* ?"

Generally, people fall into two camps when it comes to a move across continents. Either they wish they could join you (and subsequently promise to visit) or they think you've lost your mind (and with kids tagging along that is especially true). What ever your thoughts, we invite you to join our family as we journey off to India in search of new career opportunities, travel adventures, the experience of living in a foreign culture and a (hopefully) better understanding of what it means to be a human being on our rapidly shrinking planet.